Tuesday, October 23, 2018

When
investigators found $45,000 in cash inside the Brooklyn apartment of a
man they suspected might be linked to last week’s killing of a reputed
mobster, the man’s grandmother offered an explanation.

The money had turned up in the last week, she told investigators, and it came from her grandson’s T-shirt business.

Federal
prosecutors had a different theory: The man, Bushawn Shelton, 34, was a
high-ranking member of the Bloods street gang, and had taken part in a
plot to kill Sylvester and Salvatore Zottola, a father and son who were
reputed to be associates of the Bonanno crime family.

On
Thursday, Mr. Shelton, who is known as “Shelz,” was arrested and
charged in United States District Court in Brooklyn with federal
conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and brandishing a firearm.

A law enforcement source confirmed Mr. Shelton is suspected in connection with the murder of Sylvester Zottola, 71, who was gunned down outside
a Bronx McDonald’s last week, even though he was not specifically
charged with that crime. Mr. Zottola’s son, Salvatore, 41, also barely
escaped a botched attempt on his life earlier this year.

Prosecutors
said the search executed at Mr. Shelton’s home earlier on Thursday not
only uncovered the $45,000 in bills but also loaded firearms.

The
charges against Mr. Shelton signaled a break for investigators in a
frustrating case, though it still left many questions unanswered. For
nearly a year, Mr. Zottola and his son had been hunted by shadowy
assassins on the streets of the Bronx. It was a pursuit law enforcement
officials suspected stemmed from the pair’s well-documented connections
to New York’s organized crime families.

A
criminal complaint said Mr. Shelton was part of a murder-for-hire plot
targeting the Zottolas over a nearly five-month period ending with a
botched July 11 assassination attempt against the younger Zottola
outside of the family’s compound in the Throgs Neck neighborhood.
Neither Zottola is named in the complaint, but a law enforcement
official confirmed the anonymous John Doe 1 and John Doe 2 cited in the
document refer to them.

Mr.
Shelton is accused of paying another man to try to kill the pair and
providing him with getaway drivers and firearms to carry out the plot.
But the hired hitman was arrested, pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire and
agreed to cooperate with federal investigators against Mr. Shelton, the
complaint said.

Who
initially hired Mr. Shelton, and why they wanted the Zottolas dead,
remains a mystery. Court documents make no mention of a motive. Sworn
testimony indicates the case was investigated by the F.B.I.’s Balkan and
Middle Eastern organized crime squad, bolstering theories that the
Zottolas may have somehow crossed an Albanian organized crime group.

For
years, the Zottolas fostered close ties to the Luchese and Bonanno
crime families, providing and maintaining electronic gambling machines
for mob-controlled hubs in New Jersey.

The
elder Mr. Zottola had a particularly close relationship with Vincent J.
Basciano, who led the Bonanno crime family in the early 2000s before being convicted of racketeering and murder.
At the turn of the millennium, Sylvester Zottola allowed Mr. Basciano’s
girlfriend, Debra Kalb, to live at his compound in the Bronx, according
to court transcripts.

But the elder
Mr. Zottola’s ties to organized crime extended beyond the Bonanno
family. He had a long history with the Lucheses, according to an
investigator who handles Mafia inquiries but was not involved in the
murder case, and an F.B.I. report that summarizes the agency’s
debriefing of a high-ranking Bonanno crime family figure.

The
investigator said Mr. Zottola also had ties to the Genovese crime
family: He had grown up with Pasquale Falcetti, a soldier from the
Genovese family’s East Harlem crew who was known as “The Clubber.”

Mr. Shelton is expected to appear in court for a detention hearing on Friday.

2 comments:

So if he has all this close ties who wld want to kill him? Who sent the gangbanger after him? Anyone noticed a pic of Mr Sonny Francese on the florida bomber tv reports? Like it was on his social media or some shit.